The Golden Eagles face-off against the Nazareth Golden Flyers in a rare Tuesday affair tonight at 7:00 at Bill Gray's Regional Iceplex. The 2,500-seat facility is just down the pike at 2700 Brighton-Henrietta Townline Road in Rochester.
Brockport is smarting from a 5-2 manhandling by a Utica squad that had made it to last March's DIII Frozen Four. Nazareth was no better off against the same, suffering a 3-1 loss on Friday at home. In that game, Utica put 40 shots on Naz, not far off from their output against Brockport, so we are looking at very similar teams.
Nazareth was 6-19-1 last season. Although last year was its inaugural season, the team sports some decent talent. Senior Mark Zavorin had a 12-14-26 line last year while the quick-bladed Packy Jones was second on the team with 10 goals. Scott Dawson proved to be a solid blueliner last year, mixing in 17 points with his savvy "D".
Ed Zdolshek will likely man the net again tonight after having a great game against Utica (37 saves, good for a .925 save percentage). In 2012-2013 he turned back 88.9% of the shots he faced.
These are 2 relatively evenly-matched teams (despite last season's drubbing of Brockport) and the Golden Eagles have the goaltending edge, so our guys should come out on top. Prediction? 3-1.
The game cane be watched online at empire8.tv. It is NOT being covered by WBSU.
